Dear Prime Minister,[ … ] In our opinion, in order to
realize the principles of equality, dignity and freedom of religion and worship
on the one hand, while allowing those interested in segregated prayers at the
Wall on the other hand, a Third Section should be established at the Western
Wall, alongside the existing women’s section and men’s section.

The Third Section will be a
mixed section in which women will be permitted to pray while wearing a Tallit
and to read from the Torah. Mixed Bar Mitzvah ceremonies will be permitted in
this section, and girls will be allowed to hold Bat Mitzvah celebrations in
which they read from the Torah.

“The decisions are mine,”
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz said. “If everyone does their own custom, the house
will explode.”

Rabinowitz is a political
appointee, named to his post in 2000 by then-Minister of Religious Affairs
Yossi Beilin. His authority stems from a 1981 law that gives the Kotel’s chief
rabbi power to “give instructions and ensure the enforcement of restrictions.”
The law also establishes that any prayer at the Kotel must be according to
“local custom.”

Who determines local
custom? Rabinowitz.

… Sitting high above the
Kotel, protected by law from his ideological adversaries, he sees Women of the
Wall as more of a nuisance than a threat.

“It’s a group of women that
yell and want to make an event,” he said. “There’s order. You can’t just do
what you want.”

“In the specific case” —
Anat Hoffman’s — “there is consensus on one thing: The police overreached.
There was absolutely no reason whatsoever to arrest Hoffman and keep her in
prison.

“The practical thing that
has to be done now is to make the decisions of the Supreme Court more effective
in preventing the increased control of the ultra-Orthodox over the Western
Wall. That’s exactly what we’re discussing now.”

In light of the ongoing
struggles of Women of the Wall and others to create a more egalitarian
environment at the Kotel, politics wasn’t far from my mind as I was speaking to
Joy. But I soon realized that for her, the issue is much more complex.

“It’s pretty clear that the
way the Wall is handled is not just. It offends me as a human being. But it’s
also true that my identity is affirmed when I enter a space that’s identified
as a female space. I always feel that my sense of myself is on sufferance: at
any minute, others might say, ‘you’re not real.’”

Of all of the things going
on in and around Israel right now, I wanted to briefly highlight the work of
Women of the Wall, not because I always agree with them and their politics, but
because their cause represents issues that should be important to all Jews, all
Zionists, and all women and men.

“In the United States, you
can have Reform Jews in San Francisco and Chabad in Brooklyn, and they can go
to the same demonstration and not interfere with each other.” It doesn’t matter
how each group defines Jewishness, he said. That’s not true in Israel.

In Israel, you have the Law
of Return. The definition is up to bureaucrats. The moment it is the decision
of a bureaucrat it is the decision of the government, and that is why there is
the tendency to become political.

“My theory is that every 12
years or so” — when there is a major fight over defining who is a Jew — “the
Jewish people have to recharge their batteries, and then they start over again.

In the
past year, Shas' El Hama'ayan educational network received NIS 12 million from
the Education Ministry for "Torah and Jewish culture lessons not held
within a formal learning framework."

This was
in addition to the regular budget the organization gets from the ministry. El
Hama'ayan was the big winner in this regard, but others also fared well. About
NIS 35.3 million has been distributed for this purpose in 2012, most of it to
Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox organizations - some of which are engaged in trying
to convert secular people to religion.

By
comparison, the Masorti (Conservative) Movement was granted less than NIS
100,000 for its activities in the sphere of Jewish education.

Five Jerusalem restaurants
are taking the city’s chief rabbinate to court after being fined between NIS
1,000 and NIS 2,000 for calling themselves kosher without formal certification
from the rabbinate.

This is harassment and
revenge of the rabbinate against us without any reason or legal basis,” said
Shai Gini, a co-owner of the Italian dairy restaurant Topolino in Mahane
Yehuda, which was fined NIS 2,000, but does not call itself kosher in any of
its materials or in the restaurant itself.

The examination of insects in vegetables, adhering to the laws of
milk and meat – are any of these beyond the comprehension of women? Of course
not.

Is there is an halachic prohibition on a woman working in a dining room or
a kitchen? Is it so outlandish an idea that a woman would walk into the kitchen
of a restaurant, a hospital, a banquet hall or a nursing home, open
refrigerator doors and track the processing of raw materials and mixtures?
These are rhetorical questions the answers to which are clear,” says Minka.

Senior haredi figures
called for the expansion of the rabbinical courts’ authority in Israel, at an
annual rabbinical conference on Tuesday organized by the World Center of Torah
Law.

Kiryat Ono Rabbi Ratzon
Arusi, the principal architect of the conference and a member of the Council of
the Chief Rabbinate, said that the gathering was an important tool for
advancing “the assimilation of [civil aspects of] Torah law into our lives.”

“We must remember that
there is no need to search for legal answers from the laws and justice
[systems] around the world when we have God’s Torah and the laws of the Torah,”
Arusi said.

“The state must allow
rabbinical judges in rabbinical courts to hear cases of monetary and property
law ... which would allow the huge community which wants the rabbinical courts
to have this authority to be judged according to Torah law.”

Current
state practice “contradicts the state’s commitment, under international law, to
eliminating all forms of discrimination against women,” said attorney Susan
Weiss, director of CWJ. “It also contradicts the 1951 Equal Rights Law, which
mandates adequate representation of women in public bodies.”

In order
to balance the inherent inequality regarding appointing rabbinic judges, Weiss
continued, it is not enough to settle for one female representative.

“Symbolic
representation is not enough,” she insists. “This situation is a disgrace to
justice in Israel and demands immediate change.”

Rather than placing blame
on women's groups -- which have worked tirelessly for decades in the spirit of
Torah to alleviate human suffering and enable women to choose whom they want to
be married to -- Rabbi Dahan would be better served by examining his court’s
record and its complicity in the anguish of, many women who have walked with
fear through its doors.

Rabbi Ben
Dahan said he is aware that he will have to deal with disinformation spread by
"feminist" groups. As Director of the Rabbinical Courts, he ordered a
survey that found that the total number of men who refused to grant their wives
a "get", or divorce decree, was 180, while the number of women who
refused to accept the get from their husbands was 190.

Respondents
were asked about their stand on religious legislation: The Chametz Law, the
restriction on opening stores on Shabbat, the law banning the rearing of pigs,
and others.

Fifty-five
percent of respondents believe these laws should not be repealed, 40% think
they should be repealed, and the remaining 5% offered no opinion on the matter.

As for the
issue of public transportation on Shabbat, 70% of respondents said they fully
supported operating buses on the day of rest in all parts of the country (25%)
or at least partially, in areas with a secular majority (45%).

The survey
further shows that 61% of the public believe the next Knesset should enact a
law recognizing civil marriage in Israel (87% of seculars and 57% of
traditional Jews), while 31% oppose such a law (77% of haredim and 72% of
religious Jews) and 8% offered no opinion on the matter.

Sixty-three
percent of respondents believe all Israeli citizens should share the burden
(22% think all citizens must join the army, while 41% view civil service as a
reasonable alternative)...

I believe that the three
approaches to mitigation proposed above will permit coexistence in the State of
Israel, and may even be a blessing for the unique, almost untenable, path taken
by the “Jewish, democratic state,” which is ultimately an expression of the
cultural uniqueness of the State of Israel.

I believe that if we give
up our pretensions of being able to solve the problem in absolute terms, and
accept the anomaly of “Jewish and democratic” as a special Israeli challenge,
different from those faced by other countries, this tension may have an ongoing
positive influence on both opposing sides, and we will all ultimately benefit.

The Hebrew
University launched a special pre-academic preparatory program this week aimed
at members of the haredi community wishing to enroll in institutions of higher
education.

A project
of the university’s Magid Institute for Continuing Education, the initiative
was created in response to the national challenge issued by the Council for
Higher Education in Israel to increase ultra-Orthodox society’s access to
higher education.

In the report’s analysis,
however, Haredi employment figures are identical to those of Israelis who
received no schooling after the 4th grade, hovering below 50% employment.

With a 57% growth in Haredi
elementary school enrollment between 2000 and 2010, the failure of Haredi
education to produce productive workers for the Israeli economy should worry
anyone who cares about Israel’s future, Ben-David says.

The Haredi schools system
educated 20% of all preschool children in 2000. By 2010, this shares rose
substantially to 24%. Within the Jewish community alone, the share of
Haredi preschoolers rose from 25% in 2000 to over 31% by 2010.

"Shas
creates poverty and need," "The Haredi shady dealers arouse hatred
toward Torah students," "Shas gives the Haredim a bad name,"
"Shas encourages racism and discrimination" - all of these are
allegations that Amsellem, in various formulations, has long been making in the
secular media and from diverse platforms. But now he seeks to publicize these
same messages in the ultra-Orthodox media, in an attempt to snatch voters from
Shas and United Torah Judaism.

Dov Lipman
announced on Saturday night that he would be in the top 20 of Yesh Atid’s list
for the Knesset.

Lipman had
been rumored for months to fill the party’s “haredi” seat, as well as being a connection
to the English-speaking community in Israel.

Lipman is
already known as an activist in Beit Shemesh, being one of the leaders in a
recent battle which drew national attention with the city’s ultra-Orthodox over
the location of a religious-zionist girls’ school.

Israel Hayom has learned that 30
percent of haredim who received their draft notices since August, when the Tal
Law that had previously provided them with exemptions expired, have presented
themselves at IDF recruitment centers to receive draft dates for next summer.

Following the expiration of the law,
many haredim vowed they would not answer their draft notices, regardless of
their legal obligation to be drafted.

Rav
Chaim Kanievsky, said that Bnei Brak is safe from missiles. The Torah study of
that town apparently protects it, and it alone. Likewise, when the 300-strong
Grodno yeshivah relocated from Ashdod to Bet Shemesh last week due to the war
in the South … Well, if that's the case, why didn't they stay in Ashdod?

It is
likely that if this procedure is followed as instructed by the rabbonim, many
talmidim will be listed as failing to respond to the IDF draft order and arrest
warrants will be issued against them and military police will likely begin
visiting yeshivos to arrest those whose names appear on the warrants.

The old role of the elite
soldier played by secular Israelis has changed. What you see in the IDF is that
religious observant youth are working their way up the ladder of promotion.
And, a large part of the voice of Zionist ideology today emanates from
religious institutions. Secular Zionism is going through a period of
soul-searching and is having a difficult time preserving [its] ideology. Having
religious observance behind it gives Zionist ideology strength and direction.”

Just as
his followers are older now and have other things on their minds beyond
politics, Deri is no longer the precocious yeshiva student who became interior
minister before the age of 30. Having spent two years in prison and another 10
as a private businessman, the 59-year-old [sic] grandfather still has an
apparent appetite for power. But his instincts for what makes the electorate
tick seem to have dulled somewhat.

Rabbi
Aviner has every right to his opinion, but his opinion must not be construed as
the singular traditional view, and it certainly should not be the voice of the
government in Israel; a country that belongs to all of her citizens, men and
women. We have the chance to create a truly democratic Israel, but with voices
like Rabbi Aviner's rising loudly from institutions of rabbinic authority,
equality is at risk.

Our
responsibility must be to voice a different Jewish perspective, one where women
and men who want to commit their lives to service of country are celebrated,
praised and given full and equal access. That is what the tradition demands of
us.

The point is that feminism,
despite the fact that it is seen by the public as "radical" actually
always makes this balanced point, but in a culture, both religious and general,
in which the voice of a woman in any case isn't really important, who cares
what feminism says.

“There’s a
real awakening that’s taking place,” said Michael Freund, who directs Shavei
Israel, a Jerusalem-based group that helps new Jewish communities such as
Bello’s. “The Jewish spark was never quenched, and these Anusim are really
fulfilling the dreams of their ancestors in that they are taking back the
Jewish identity that was so brutally stolen from their forefathers.”

Are American Jews and
Israelis drifting apart? Contemporary reports on American Jewish public opinion
have claimed that American Jews have increasingly distanced themselves from the
Jewish state. Is that the case, and if so, what are the reasons for it?

"The
religious world's access to the Internet, and women's access in particular, has
soared by hundreds of percentage points, so the era in which women look for
inspiration in conservative shop windows is over. Today they look for
inspiration from abroad online."

The
Jerusalem Municipality awarded initial approval to a plan to rebuild the
Tiferet Israel synagogue in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, a magnificent domed
synagogue from the 19th century which was destroyed in the 1948 War of
Independence.